A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary ...

clx DISSEKTATION.
island, agreed well with this account of them. The Negroes of
the Andamans are in the very lowest and most abject state of
human society, without fixed dwellings, unclad, and unac-
quainted with the meanest of the useful arts of life. In dispo-
sition they are shy, unsocial, and mischievous.
We next find a Negro race in the northern portion of the
Malayan peninsula, within the territories of the INIalay princes
of Queda, Perak, Pahang, and Triugauu, known to the Malays
under the names of Samang and Bila. The complexion of these
is black, or sooty, the hair woolly, the features approaching to
the African, and the stature dwarfish. An adult Samang male,
said to be of the mean height of his people, was measured by
my friend General M'Innes, and found to be only 4 feet 9 inches
high. Some of the Samang, or Bila, have fixed habitations,
and practise a rude agriculture, but the majority lead an erratic
life, gathering the rude products of the forest to exchange
with the Malays for the necessaries of life, or subsisting by
the chase.
The great islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Celebes, are
not known to contain any Negro race, nor is there any record
or tradition of their ever having done so. A Negro race occurs
next, proceeding eastward, in the island of Mores, but no
account of it has been rendered. Of the great island of New
Guinea, they form the whole native or aboriginal population,
as they also do of the islets near its coasts. Even within New
Guinea itself, there would seem to be more than one race.
Mr. Madera, of the Dutch Navy, quoted by Mr. Earl in the
Journal of the Indian Archipelago, describes two of them which
he saw on the south-west coast. The complexion of one of
them was black, but not intensely so, and it had a bluish tinge.
The lips were pretty thick, and the nose somewhat flat. Tlie
hair of the head was pitch-black, and frizzled, and the beard
crisp, like the hair of the head. The stature was of the middle
size, and the person by no means strong built.
A hundred miles further north, on the same coast,
Mr. Madera met another Negro race. The colour of the skin, in
this case, was a deep brown. The hair of the head was frizzly,
the mouth large, with white teeth, the lips thick, and the nose
flabby and drooping. The stature was the mean height, but